County Trying To Keep Ball Camps

Commission Considering New Stadium For Braves, Expos

December 12, 1994|By NICOLE STERGHOS Staff Writer

Ham Higgins is a little bored these days.

As spring training ticket director at the Atlanta Braves box office in West Palm Beach, he is used to the hourlong lines and play-ball fever that normally develop just beyond his ticket window this time of year.

Last year on opening day for ticket sales, eager baseball fans waited in line for three hours to buy passes to the Braves' exhibition games.

But last Monday, the first day that the 1995 spring season tickets became available, only one man visited the Municipal Stadium box office.

"I've never seen it this slow," said Higgins, who has sold tickets at the stadium for 16 years. "Obviously, it's because of the strike."

As baseball players and owners continue their contract negotations, most of their fans are sweating it out at home, some souring over the game and others waiting to see when they can hit the ballpark again.

But Palm Beach County commissioners are moving forward to plans to accommodate the Braves and the Montreal Expos in order to keep the two teams training here.

The National League teams, which have shared Municipal Stadium for 25 seasons, threatened to take their spring training camps elsewhere after the 1995 season if they did not get new and separate stadiums.

Both teams softened on that stand last week, and county commissioners are moving toward a new, scaled-back version of the plan: building one $25 million stadium for two teams. Whether that project will go to Jupiter or to West Palm Beach is up for debate.

The county originally had agreed to build all or part of two $15 million stadiums: one for the Braves in Jupiter and one for the Expos in West Palm Beach.

The city of West Palm Beach has said it would pay for all the maintenance, operation and capital improvement costs if the county pays the construction expenses. The Jupiter project, meanwhile, has a consortium of financiers, including the Braves, Turner Broadcasting System, the MacArthur Foundation and local developer George de Guardiola.

Commissioner Mary McCarty, for one, said she would examine the proposals before her and determine which deal represented the best use of county bed tax dollars.

But she said she wouldn't be crushed if the commission decided not to build a stadium at all, especially in light of the baseball strike.

"The fact that there is a strike makes me even more skeptical as to the appropriateness of putting bed tax dollars up for this to begin with," McCarty said. "The big economic impact that everybody kept talking about is now almost a joke because it, too, is subject to strikes."

According to current estimates, $36.5 million was pumped into Palm Beach County in 1993 as a result of the Braves' and the Expos' spring training operations. The fans alone spent $9.4 million of that.

Spring training not only puts money into the economy, but it also lines the pockets of the people who depend on baseball for their livelihood - hot dog vendors, parking valets, ticket sellers and T-shirt hawkers.

The strike "is costing a lot of money for those people," Commissioner Burt Aaronson said. "There's no real guarantee for them."

The situation, McCarty said, "makes it a harder sell to the public."

Bruce Gaum, of Boynton Beach, can attest to the frustration over the strike. "I think it's an absolute joke. You've got multimillionaires suing multimillionaires," he said. "Give me a break. You've got people around here who can't even buy Christmas presents, so I don't think people have much sympathy for them."

Gaum bought a few spring training tickets last week in case the strike ends before the season begins. "If it doesn't, I don't care if they ever play baseball again," he said.

Other baseball fans are optimistic, representing the people who will flock to games no matter how long the strike lasts.

"They'll figure it out," said Chuck Kidd, of Port St. Lucie. "I was disappointed, but we love to watch baseball, so we're optimistic they'll work it out."

And when they do, Kidd already will have bought tickets to two March games for him and his son, Ryan, 11.

The season is scheduled to open March 2, and pitchers and catchers are scheduled to arrive Feb. 18, Higgins said.